In my family, we’ve set 8th grade as the minimum age, and we are restrictive when it comes to social media and other app use.

And we teach why.

But society has changed—for good or bad—to make phone use the norm. It’s the way they communicate, it’s the way schools communicate, it’s the way they get information for events at school or church. It’s the way rhey pay for things, it’s the way they apply for jobs and it’s the way their employers communicate to them.

I would love for my children to live in the 1990s, where we had no choice but to communicate verbally and we had to figure things out. We had to study road maps and we had to ask questions to get information.

But that’s not the way it is. So our best option is to reach them how to best manage this new environment.

Re-reading your post from earlier, we are probably on the same page, more or less. I’m not opposed to buying them their phone, though, and my approach is to teach it all as a positive thing that they should embrace and use to their advantage. The scripture and Gospel/Church tools alone are incredibly beneficial.